A co-authored series on what faculty members need to thrive vocationally.
If we’re being honest, most of us hesitate to admit to our limitations. Instead, we overpromise, overcommit, and sometimes even burn out. We often attempt to skirt our limitations, power through them, or ignore them and hope they won’t trip us again. Yet doing so can lead to a downward spiral of feeling inadequate, hoping that accomplishing something might raise our spirits, but then we reach our limits and feel inadequate once more.
What if, instead of dodging our limitations or carefully hiding them from others, we accepted them openly and graciously—and considered them as central to a healthy vocation?
We recently experienced this tendency when we turned down (or hopefully just delayed) an offer to submit to a magazine that we really, really love. When the offer came, we scheduled a phone call to discuss it. Kristin started the call by naming everything she was juggling: grading, a major book deadline, drafts of these NetVUE posts, and family activities. Elisabeth responded, “We should say, ‘No.’” Kristin was surprised. “I thought you were going to talk me into it!” Prior to the call, we had both been planning to make it work, but we were also secretly anxious about our limits. We were reminded (again) of how easy it is to say “yes” when we should say “no.”
Embracing our limits is much easier said than done. We don’t always fully understand our limitations and sometimes spend decades trying to overcome them. We don’t know why we have fewer financial or communal resources, or why our kids never seem to let us read to the end of a paragraph; why we become unexpectedly ill, or why our colleagues seem to make efficient progress with few barriers. What we do know is that we face limitations for myriad reasons, and we have to work within these realities.
In The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, John Mark Comer reframes how we might think of these kinds of challenges. “Limitations aren’t all bad,” he writes, “They are where we find God’s will for our lives.” From our perspective as Christians, vocational discernment requires us to confront the truths that we are limited and prone to error and that we are also made in the image of God and of infinite value and worth. Instead of striving to “have it all” (or “be it all”) as American culture often suggests, Comer helps us distinguish between our infinite worth and finitude as created beings. Recognizing our limitations is essential to guide our vocational discernment. We contribute much to the world, we are worth much, and we can only do so much.
As such, we must continuously discern the right work for this time and place. Vocational discernment requires flexibility, reflexivity, and accountability to others, especially when it’s hard.
In the context of faculty life, limits can take multiple forms. Some are negative, preventing us from doing things that might cause harm while others are positive, encouraging us to pursue things that contribute to our flourishing. Some limits are persistent, like those related to our personalities, social identities, or physical limitations. Other limits are transient: as parents with school-aged kids, we don’t have the same availability as we once did and will have again. Attending to these changing limitations is good, for doing so allows us to balance multiple callings on our lives, including obligations related to family, work, and community.
Exploring the particularities of negative or positive limits can be helpful in discerning healthy vocational boundaries. Here are few that we think are important for faculty members and others who work in higher education:
First, “negative” limitations. It is essential for faculty members to protect their time. We each have an informal heuristic for this limit. For Kristin, protecting time comes in the form of the question: “Would I be willing to do more paid work?” If the answer is yes, she feels she has an adequate margin to add additional responsibilities to her workday. Elisabeth asks a different question: “Can I fit these tasks within the timeframe of a typical work week?” For her, it’s important to preserve her nights and weekends for other callings. You may have your own ways of guarding against overwork; the important thing is recognizing your own criteria for setting these boundaries, which look different for everyone.
A related limit is that you shouldn’t say “yes” to all the things, even if they are important. Missional organizations can tend to encourage their employees to “do it for the team,” encouraging overwork. Elisabeth remembers a conversation with a burned-out faculty colleague who was contemplating teaching another course on overload, worrying students would suffer if they declined. While this may have been true, we would argue that this problem was due to institutional factors—too few full-time faculty, insufficient investment in curriculum and instruction, tight budgets. Vocational discernment requires that we distinguish between burdens that belong to us and those that do not.
In terms of “positive” limitations, pursue opportunities that bring joy. We have noticed in our own careers that good work generates more work, meaning that if you are an effective and productive faculty member—you are a strong contributor to committees, you return well-written manuscripts on time, or you teach courses students are excited to take—you will be “rewarded” with additional opportunities. Rather than acquiesce to the “curse of competence,” use abundance as a reason to audit your workload. What do you actually like doing? On days when you feel energized, what work have you been doing? Pay attention. As you’re able, lean into what brings you joy and prune what does not.
Finally, consider what it takes to thrive where you are. It’s worth noting that most faculty members are trained at R1 institutions, therefore their first academic mentors often professors who have succeeded in this context. Small liberal arts colleges can function and feel quite different. And while your pre-tenure research might carry forward projects that you initiated during graduate school, post-tenure, you’ll likely need to revise your trajectory so that it fits your current context.
What does it look like to thrive in your place, not just a place? For Elisabeth, trained in comparative education and having worked on larger-scale international research projects in graduate school, the answer to this question has looked like finding creative ways to continue working internationally—notably, by teaching and designing faculty-led study-abroad courses. John Anthony Dunne, whose chapter in our edited volume Purpose and Joy explores how to use your teaching to support your research, suggests another way of thinking about thriving within a particular context: rather than bemoan being a square peg in a round hole, you can seek opportunities that look square-ish or help you become rounder.
Ultimately, we benefit when we re-imagine our limitations, leaning into ongoing vocational discernment that pushes us to pursue the right work for this time and this place. As Karin Spiecker Stetina writes, “Managing our time, energy, resources, and talents . . . helps us be faithful stewards. Saying yes to the right things requires knowing our limitations.” Once we recognize our limitations, we can be strategic with our time and opportunities in ways that facilitate thriving. None of us can do it all, which means all of us must order our commitments within healthy boundaries. Resisting overwork, carrying a sustainable load, and pursuing joy and purpose within the constrained realities of our work and life supports vocational flourishing.
Elisabeth Lefebvre is an associate professor of education and president of the faculty governance assembly at Bethel University in Arden Hills, Minnesota. Elisabeth’s research focuses on the mutually constitutive relationships among schooling, history, and culture. Along with Kristin VanEyk, she is the co-editor of Purpose and Joy: Pursuing a Meaningful Career in Christian Higher Education. Her research has also been published in Comparative Education Review, Journal of Education Policy, Teachers College Press, the International Journal of Educational Development, and elsewhere. She also writes about education, justice, and community for Christianity Today, Mockingbird, and Reformed Journal.
Kristin VanEyk is an assistant professor of English education at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, where she teaches writing and education courses. Along with Elisabeth Lefebvre, she is the co-editor of Purpose and Joy: Pursuing a Meaningful Career in Christian Higher Education. Her scholarship about teaching, education, and language studies has also appeared in Daedalus, Pedagogy, Christianity Today, and elsewhere.
